… shot through the heart

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Day 26: A night with geneticists

Tonight I went to a fundraiser for the Genome Integrity Unit in Westmead. I love it when a word is used correctly. Integrity in your genes is super important!

It got me thinking of my sliding doors moment. What would my life be today had I pursued a career in Science. Women in STEM is the new black these days. Would I have pursued a life of research or would I have struck gold and discovered some breakthrough technology?

Just one catch. I suck at Science and I suck at Maths. My Uni years were spent on struggle street, plodding along the bottom quartile of the student population. Science, in its natural home of empirical thinking, logic and calculations, was difficult for me.

But cast me in the world of finance journalism, which I consider half-science and half-art and my mind is tickled. There’s enough technical cintent to get my mind whirring but there’s still enough creativity in writing the narrative to stir my soul. After all, at the heart of it, the world of finance is still about human behavior.

But this post is dedicated to all the geneticists in the world. When Dr. Tony Cesare was onstage, the question to him was: “will your work cure cancer?”

He said, “No, it wouldn’t. But it would certainly make cancer a manageable disease.”